The God Squad

                             [A] committee of high-level officials nicknamed the God Squad . . . can override
                            the landmark Endangered Species Act so that development or other projects can
                            proceed even if they might result in an extinction.
	                                                            “Trump Moves to Increase Logging in National Forests,”
                                                                        New York Times


I left the hard road for boggy trail, 
the company of green-sheathed trees, 
their coats of silky lichen. Elk prints 
sunk deep. The way littered with drink 

cans, a Heineken bottle aglow in a scrim 
of mud, spent shells. Today, no one 
here but me in the mossy trees, rain 
pings on my coat. Only when I look 

up can I see the shorn hillsides cleared
of trees, their somber bodies daily hauled 
out the two lane to the highway, to the mills. 
Later, the empty trailers rattle home, extra 

trailers on their backs like coupling bugs.
The new king of our republic has signed 
a bill allowing logging in National Forests. 
Chainsaws and the long stored carbon 

dioxide they clean from air released, 
doubling what we lose. I watch the rain 
bounce in pothole puddles, slide down the creased 
leaves of Japanese andromeda, 

genus Pieris, named for the muses who drank 
from the fountain of knowledge of art and science
on Mount Olympus, but were turned into crows. 
Everything in the end comes back to a god

who doles out black coats 
turns our voices into caws.

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them) is a Queer elder living in rural Washington on unceded Methow land. They are the author of five collections of poetry including A Brief History of My Sex Life, forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books in 2026; the Lambda Literary Award finalist Transitory, from BOA Editions, 2023; and Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, Red Flag Poetry, 2023, re-released in an extended edition in the summer of 2024.